Letter #9 September 23,2013

Segrada vaca!! hehe i cant believe that it has already been another week already! I have been in Mexico for 3 weeks, crazyness!! On one hand, it feels like i havent been here all that long, but at the same time it feels like i have been here for always. haha its so weird. Guess what!? tomorrow i will have been on my mission for 2 months. i cant believe it. i only have 22 months left!! I HAVE SO MUCH TO LEARN and BECOME!!! ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! haha looking back there is so much that i wish i would have done better, at the MTC in these past three weeks, but i just have to keep reminding myself that i have to be patient with myself, which is honestly one of the hardest things, you all know me. anyway, so yeah i have been and will continue to work on the whole, looking back with just enough regret to remember and change and improve!!! 

Phew, i absolutely love reading all of your letters, but it definetely makes it harder to write to all of you afterwards because i just want to keep on reading about everything from all of you!!!

OH! and when we were on intercambios with the district leader and his companion we saw a ton of high school kids blocking traffic in the city and protesting about that strike education reform thing! kinda crazy!!! 

Phew the weather is so weird, after i wrote you about it being so cold and everything, it has warmed up a lot, i just sleep in my shorts and tshirt and its been really warm during the days also. today is super hot!! AHHH!!!! we have to leave to eat, and then we still have to go shopping before district meeting. oh and im teaching the 5 minutes teaching minute thing in the meeting...fun. ah im scared. but anyway, that gives you a little better idea of all the people here.

Love 

Pear!!!

p.s. pictures of the first day i did my hair, and today! dia de preparacion!

Letter #8 September 16,2013

Holy vaca! i cant believe that it has already been another week. and that i have been in mexico for 2 weeks already!! 

So it rains..pretty much every day. usually in the afternoon, for 2 or 3 hours, sometimes more. a lot of times its just a cold drizzle, and others its realllly hard. haha my first week i think there were rivers in the callas, it was raining that hard. thats when we went and bought sweaters! (like you can see in the pictures!! :) wow i am shocked that it didn{t say in my packet to bring more warm ropas (sorry, i try to write a word, and i cant spell to save my life anymore!!) because it is cold!! the mornings are pretty brisk when we are studying, and my knee caps always get freezing cold. haha i am going to look for another blanket, and another pillow. i only have the one that you sent me, and i love it! but i think i just need another one so my head is higher up, because i always wake up and my shoulders hurt. Elder Reiley says its because i have broad shoulders. i hope so! haha OH!

Mom, yes my pdays are on mondays! :) and Elder Reiley is from Hawaii, he has been on his mission 3 months, he just finished being trained, and now is training me. haha we get lost a lot. especially because he was in las vegas for 6 weeks waiting to get his visa, and then here for 6 when i got here, but thats okay! we are learning together! there is this thing that we do called the first 12 weeks, where the new missionaries get trained, so elder reiley and i do it every morning for companionship study, and we have two hours every day instead of one. its been hard, because its a lot of just practicing. and its hard because i just either want to be learning and studying doctrine, or spanish! i practiced a ton in the MTC and what better practice than teaching right? but yesterday i tried to be more positive and i learned a lot about how to teach things and say things, and its in spanish, so thats good practice right?? yeah, the language is still killer hard. its so frustrating. i can understand enough to know where the conversations are going, or get the jist of things for pretty much every situation, but talking is sooo much harder. and everyone here just expects that i know everything they are saying, and even when i do, i dont want them to know that because i dont know how to respond!!! haha but i think that i know a lot of spanish. words, tenses and such, i just need to practice them, because they are in there, they just are slow coming out, and correctly because i havent used them enough. I definetely want to learn more grammar, that is so hard. i think im figuring out how its opposite in a lot of cases, like we told him is le dicimos. weird. the first week i was reallly good at only speaking spanish, but this past week was a lot harder, 

Pear

Letter # 7 September 9, 2013 (First Letter From Mexico)

HEY!!!! i made it to Mexico!! i am alive and doing well (except that the keyboards here are really weird and it says i{m spelling everything wrong, but whatever.. haha) so i am going to attach some pictures to this one and then write my long one on the next one, and i{m just going to send it to mom and dad because i don{t know how well it will send to everyone! 

 so my area is called la Noria 1, and is way up in the mountains and you can see a ton of the city from up here, it is sooo awesome! oh and that view where we took the pictures is just a few minutes away from our apartment. Oh! and where we live is San Lucas, its a way cool place! and is cold too!! haha the first two nights i just slept in my shorts and tshirt like i usually did, and i froze!!! Last night i wore my sweats, 2 pairs of socks and a jacket. best i have slept since i got here!! 

Okay, to start off! so monday we flew a bunch and that was awesome, i had a really cool experience!! wow it seems so long ago!!! so in short there was a mom, a dad and a son that were sitting like diagnolly from me and it took me like 2 hours to finally just talk to them (its so hard when i know that i want to eventually talk about the gospel, but it is defintely getting easier, because honestly, isnt that what im all about? and for that matter, isnt it what this life is all about?? so i eventually talked to here, and it was great, but then she was just like, well it was nice visiting with you (we talked about homeschooling and stuff like that, which was cool) but i was so frustrated that i didnt get to talk to here about anything deep. but then i had the thought to make a little flapping bird to give to her son (he was 6) and i did and he loved it and then i talked to him a bunch and his mom and gave him a little mormon.org pass along card so he could go online and learn more about me and why i{m a missionary. haha he was sooo excited and then he tried to express how i could learn more about him, through his actions. haha it was sooo could and i told him that i might not be able to but that if he kept making good choices his parents would be able to see that. and that was sooo awesome! i loved it!!!

Its been really hard, but it is good, and its suprising how fast i am learning!!!

I love you all!!!! Ill have more time next week to write, so keep writing me!!! 

LOVE YOU TONS!!!!

ELDER OLSEN

PEAR!!!

Mexico City Here He Comes!!

So Perry goes to Mexico tomorrow! His new address will be:

Elder Perry Joseph Olsen
México México City South Mission
Av. Progreso 106, 3º Piso
Barrio Santa Catarina, Coyoacán
04010 México , Distrito Federal
Mexico

If you want to mail him through the Church's Pouch mail these are the instructions:
Letter folding: Lay the letter blank side down. Fold the bottom of the letter about one-third of the way up the page and crease. Fold the top of the letter to the bottom of the first fold and crease. Secure the long side with two pieces of tape about one inch in from each end, but do not seal the ends. In the top left corner write your name and complete return address. Affix first class postage i the right corner. In the middle write the missionary address as follows:

Elder Perry Joseph Olsen
México México City South Mission
POB 30150
Salt Lake City UT 84130-0150

Letter #6 August 31,2013 (Last MTC letter)

familia!!!!! how is everything going???? i can't believe that i am going to be thousands of miles away from all of you in two days!!! AHHHH!!!!! i am sooo scared, but at the same time i am getting excited (when i don't think about all the actual things that i am going to be doing and just think about the overall awesomeness of it, then i'm excited!) haha i guess that is what i need to do! Just keep the feeling of the importance of what i'm doing and keep working towards that end result of helping others to come unto cristo and partake of eternal life and salvation!!! Wow i don't even know where to begin!!! Oh! haha so i attached a few more pictures of my last days at the MTC, i hope that i'll be able to send some pretty soon after getting to mexico (and that i look somewhat alright in them! ;) so i got this sweet superman/CTR shirt, i don't know if you can tell what it says, but its way cool and i thought that you would all get a kick out of that!! :

Oh but first i wanted to say thanks so much for the package!!!! I went and got it when we sent our packages and it was so great! And please tell the Anderson's thanks for their package!!! It was awesome!!! haha it was like christmas! in August!! :D i can't wait to read my 10 first days in mexico! and i absolutely LOVED all the pictures...but they made me get really chocked up!! but like i have said with the other elder's countless times, if we didn't love people then we wouldn't dread saying goodbyes and miss them when they are gone. Like i said earlier when we had our district testimony meeting, it was so awesome! because i just felt and have felt so much love for my "temporary" family in my district, and even though they each have things that kind of bug me, and i'm sure many things about me bug them, i really have grown to love them and i appreciate them sooo much and they all have so many good things that they have helped me in. and i guess that is what love is, just realizing that mistakes and annoyances don't define who someone is...it's who they are on the inside, and who they are trying to be, or even who they COULD become...i think that's why Heavenly Father loves us so much! because he knows that we can get through any problem or sin or whatever and become AWESOME! well..we are awesome, he knows that too. :D haha

TESTIMONY:

Hey everyone!!!! I am off to mexico in about 36 hours 2 min, 39 seconds..I'm just kidding, I'm not THAT scared to go! I am definetly very nervous but i know that I will grow and learn and love many people as i Love the Lord and Heavenly Father and I am very excited!!! I don't want to leave, but I know that it is time and it will be great! So i just wanted to share a thought that i have had this last little while in the last week of being here!

To start off, I just want to say that i have received this knowledge and feelings that i want to share, through working for them. Through sincere prayer to my Heavenly Father, and thinking about things and waiting and KNOWING that he will give an answer. And then listening. REading the scriptures, especially El Libro De Mormon, and hearing his answer through the feelings of love, of peace and of happiness that i feel. I know that these feelings are the answers that i need, and are the greatest in the world, and i know they are from God.

So real quickly i just want to talk about the testimony that i have gained of Love. It being my 2nd to last day at the MTC i have defintely been looking back and reflecting on what i have learned the most here, and what i want to take with me into the mission field and what i want to improve on and get better at. And the one thing that has been at the foundation of all that i have learned is that we all have a Heavenly Father who loves us. No matter what principle or what doctrine i am learning or growing in, or what trials i am having, or what blessings I am given, i know that God the Heavenly Father loves us...so much. I have felt his love so much in my life, i grew up feeling his love through you my wonderful family, and especially the love from Mom and Dad. I don't think its possible that anyone could love me more than all of you have, but I know that Heavenly Father does. And that as we feel his love and know that he loves us, we can love others so much more than we could ever be able to without the love of God, and as we follow him, and talk to him in prayer, and praise him and LOVE him..then we are completing our purpose here, and we will have immense joy and happiness for FOREVER! Love is everything. I know this. I know that God loves you, and that his Son Jesus Christ, our Savior and friend loves us. And i love all of you as well!

LOVE,

Elder Olsen

So back to my best friends! (thats you fam! ;) i just hope that you all know how much you mean to me and how grateful i am for each one of you!!! It's going to be so sad when i don't have as much time to write you, but if i don't get out there and do what i am suppose to do then i won't have awesome stories to share!! That really is one of the best things for me. When i get down or discouraged and i'm sure ill do this a lot in the field as well. I just think that i want to do this and work on this so that i can "report" to all of you and tell you the things i am learning and the ways that i am growing! So thank you for that! i absolutely love hearing from you and sharing all of my experiences with you too!! haha i hope that you enjoy reading my letters as much as i enjoy sending them! i still don't know if they always make complete sense, so if it doesn't just make up something that i would probably say! :D haha you all are defintetly a huge part of what i enjoyed most about the MTC and i am sure that i will love getting letters and emails from you in the field as well! It's weird, the time that i have learned to love you all most is when i'm so far away, i guess that absence makes the heart grow fonder (not that i didn't love you all before!!!) but i am excited to keep learning how to love you all better, and just how to love in general, and to continue working and improving in that for the rest of my life! 

I bet it is such an awesome party there with ADj and Jared living there, keep having TONS of fun!!! When you tell me of all the crazy awesome normal life things that go on, i feel like i am still a part of them, and i think i am, because even if we are so far apart, we are always in each others hearts!! :D we are all working towards the same goal!! Eternal life and happiness with each other!!! Thanks for being the best family in the world!!! LES AMO A USTEDES MUCHISIMO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ELDER PEAR JOSEPH AWESOME SUPERMAN OLSEN! ;)

Letter #5 August 26,2013

OH!!! haha so you know how i said that elder neddo and i were called as zone leaders?? well we were called on sunday (just after sacrament meeting, the branch president asked us and we accepted, but it wouldn't have been made official till yesterday) and then on tuesday, we were talking to the zone leaders about following them so we can learn how to be zone leaders on wednesday night when all the new people come and they welcome them. and the zone leaders were so confused, they were like...what? weren't these other two missionaries called to be zone leader? thats what president wing told us. and we were like, uhhh...he asked us after sacrament meeting..but it would have made a lot more sense for the others to be, because they still have 4 weeks left, not 1 1/2. haha so then we took it that we were probably not going to be zone leaders, which was totally fine, and then on wednesday night we asked president wing and he told us that nope, we defintely were and it was suppose to be us, and so we were like...okay cool! we are good either way! haha and we explained the confusion and he said nope definetely you two. and THEN!! on thursday night, his first counselor came while we were studying and said that president wing has some senor moments and that it was suppose to be the other two elders the whole time. haha he felt so bad, but elder neddo and i were just laughing. we would have been fine having more responsiblitiy or not! so it was pretty funny, and it was cool, because i have always been pretty chill, with just whatever, but it just showed to me how we have to be okay when things don't work out perfectly how we want them to, or go exactly according to plan, and if things change we just need to trust in the Lord and be flexible! not saying that you shouldn't commit to things and work towards them and have plans, but be willing to follow the spirit in a lesson if you should teach something different than what you had planned, or whatever the case may be! pretty awesome!!! :D

LoVE YOU ALL!!!!!!!!!

ELDER PEAR!!!!!!!